Hi Gram,
I’ve been in Arvada for five days now and I haven’t done much of note. I get up every morning, do my morning routine of vitamins and medicine, brain exercises, Duolingo, stretches or yoga, yada yada, I won’t bore you with the details. I go for a walk or bike ride, update the blog, chat with Nicki, read a book, made some phone calls… before I know it, the day is almost over. Five days and it’s just occurring to me today how much I needed this. I was all stoked to see people and plan lunches and dinners together, go see the things, experience all that Denver has to offer. It turns out that after all the chores I had to do in Illinois before leaving, my body and mind needed a few slow days to de-compress, chat with a friend, and just not do much.
On Tuesday, it was raining so I couldn’t do my daily bike or run or walk or jump rope but luckily Nicki has an elliptical machine and I was able to use that to get my heart rate up a little and stay dry. The rain let up a little in the afternoon so I went and bought a pillow I could use in all my travels since I left my other pillow in Illinois. In the evening, my friend Alex called and we went over some numbers on a house that he was thinking about buying. I really enjoy looking at properties with friends and helping them think through the numbers and all the “what if” scenarios to see if they can make it profitable. It was good to catch up with him too, since we haven’t seen each other in a few months.
On Wednesday, I decided to ride my bike to Home Depot to get drawer tracks to fix a set of drawers here. I love my ebike that lets me get a little exercise, keep the blood flowing, but still go run errands that are nearby. I got back with those and went for a further ride along the same path that I walked the other day. The path was a little hard to follow at times, weaving through neighborhoods and a golf course, with a lot of little spurs that shoot off to people’s backyards or to a neighborhood, but I finally got to the foothills and could see the mountains.
Just as I got to that point, I ran into a little rain so I turned around and was able to outrun it. Once I got back and cleaned up, Max and Nicki asked if I wanted to play a card game called “oh hell” with them. It’s a lot like Hearts or Spades, where each player bids on the number of tricks they’re going to take then tries not to go over or under. Everyone starts with three cards for the first round, then the whole deck is shuffled and a card is added for each subsequent round until the deck is exhausted. I’m told the game goes kind of quick with 5 or 6 people since the cards run out after a few rounds. In our case, we had three people so the game kept getting more and more ridiculous as our hands grew in size, topping out at seventeen cards each! We were laughing as we would each sort through our own miniature deck of cards to try to guess how many tricks we could take. Surprisingly, we were each pretty accurate and the score stayed close, trading who was in the lead until the last few hands. It was a fun game that I plan to play again.
We ordered Indian food to be delivered when our hands were around eight cards each. Our timing was spot on because dinner was delivered as we were finishing up the last round. Max headed home as we put away the cards and got out some bowls and plates so we could dive in and enjoy our feast. Everything was so delicious that we both, of course, ate too much. Satiated and happy, we shut off the lights and headed to bed.
Thursday was a day to catch up on phone calls and paperwork, nothing too exciting. The rain held up a little in the afternoon long enough for Nicki and I to get in a quick walk, but I spent most of the day fixing the drawer and grazing on leftovers while she did some cleaning and fixing around the house.
Friday left both of us so tired. I don’t know if it was the rain, a food coma, or what but we both kept commenting all day about how tired we were. I went and visited my friend Becky in the afternoon for a while. We had a good talk and caught up on life since we’d last seen each other, then I cut the visit short because of my cat allergies. I didn’t think to ask if she had cats and therefore didn’t think to take any allergy meds. We visited for a while, but once I felt the congestion starting in I decided it was safer to leave and get together another time than to suffer through the allergic reaction for the next couple of days. I headed back to the house and worked on getting caught up with my letters here, but I’m probably going to head to bed soon.